The Duke Abides: Revisiting Tony Hawk’s Xbox Debut

Through its infectious risk/reward hook, Tony Hawk tapped into a rare confluence of strategy, improvisation, and greed to paint the thinnest and most thrilling of lines between triumphant payoff and abject failure. In many ways, THPS appealed more to the score attack sensibilities of NiGHTS into Dreams, Crazy Taxi, or chain-based shmups than other popular conventions of the era.

A Defense of the Mediocre NFL Video Game

Existing neither as a fully-fledged simulation nor all-out NFL Blitz-esque arcade fare, NFL Fever 2002 stands as a reasonably accessible football game that feels surprisingly solid to play, albeit with tempered depth and charisma. Overall, it’s quite mediocre. As famed cornerback Richard Sherman might put it: NFL Fever may well be the Michael Crabtree of sports games.

And for NFL Fever 2002, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.